Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to computer implemented systems and methods that facilitate secured transmission of data packets across a computer network. Particularly, the present disclosure relates to a computer-implemented system and method that facilitates communication of data packets on a secured virtual overlay network built atop a conventional public computer network.
Description of the Related Art
Typically, data processing applications process and transmit highly confidential and business critical information. Computer resource security necessitating utmost importance in such scenarios prompt network administrators to look beyond the conventional network security phenomenon such as password locks, firewalls, authorisation controls, authentication techniques and cryptographic techniques.
However, when multitude of computer terminals are interconnected in a distributed computer network, with each of the computer terminals requesting incessant data access from storage devices and data files, employing effective security across the entirety of the distributed computer network becomes a challenge. One of the common techniques employed by network administrators to ensure that the computer network remains secured is to prevent un-trusted computer devices from accessing the computer network, by introducing any of the well-known access control mechanisms into the computer network.
Typically, access control mechanisms scan the computer network to identify the computer terminals requesting access thereto, and subsequently verify whether the said computer terminals are authorized to request access to the computer network. Typically, access rights and authentication information associated with each of the computer terminals are analysed prior to granting the computer terminals with necessary access rights and permissions to access the computer network (and the network resources).
However, in case of conventional public networks, the connections between various participating computer terminals is pre-defined/pre-established. The network connections are typically pre-defined using router/switches for a quick establishment of a communication link the participating computer terminals, whenever there arises a requirement. Even though conventional public networks with pre-defined network connections to each of the participating computer terminals offer improvements in terms of the time taken to establish inter-network/intra-network communications, pre-defined network connections nevertheless are vulnerable to the threat of a security breach, given the fact the pre-defined network connections are visible to every participating device present on the network and are easily accessible and traversable.
Therefore, in order to obviate the security issues associated with conventional public computer networks, there was felt a need for a computer implemented system and method that introduces dynamicity into a computer network by creating a virtual overlay network between a first computer terminal and a second computer terminal only after receiving a request to that extent from the first computer terminal and only after duly verifying the credentials of the first computer terminal as well as the second computer terminal. Further, there is also felt a need for a computer implemented system and method that renders the virtual overlay network inaccessible (invisible) to every other computer terminal connected to the underlying public network and ensures that any computer terminal accessing the virtual overlay network is duly authenticated (and its credentials and access permissions duly verified) before being allowed to access the virtual overlay network. Further, there has also been felt a need for a computer implemented system and method that does away with pre-established/pre-defined/pre-configured computer networks and facilitates creation of a secured, virtual overlay network in a dynamic manner, only after receiving access request(s) from any of the computing systems forming a part of the conventional public network, and only after verifying the credentials of the requesting computing systems as well as that of the computing resources (for example, an application server, a web server or a peer computing system) that have been requested access to.